Caution setting hoops on Japanese Chisels

[promhandicam]

I recently bought some Japanese chisels and part of the 'fun' is that you have to finish making them before you can use them. I followed the instructions here on the tools for working wood website.

All went well until I came to the last and thinnest chisel a 1.5mm (don't ask why I bought such a thin chisel - I just did OK )

As you can see below I can now chisel round corners with it :roll:

The instructions say, "With the hoop seating correctly, seat the hoop permanently by gently hammering the hoop down directly or using a cat's paw. Warning: do not hold the handle in a vise (sic), since hammering a clamped handle will loosen the blade. Hammer the hoop with the blade resting cross-grain on a scrap of wood." . . which is what I did.

Not owning a cat I used a suitably sized socket - big enough to clear the wooden handle but small enough to seat on the hoop. This worked fine on the other chisels but evidently not on the thin one. I don't think that it was anything to do with using the socket - and I swear that I wasn't using a lump hammer :lol: My advise would be a vise to clamp onto the top of the blade where it tapers out to make the socket to join the handle.

One thing that the accident did highlight was the construction of these chisels. You can (hopefully) clearly see that the lower part of the blade has fractured as it is hard/brittle, but the top half is much more malleable and has bent. I might try and regrind the bit that is left although there is only about 15mm of usable material left.

Hope this helps someone else from ending up with a 135 degree chisel like wot I've got now. :shock:

Steve
(on holiday for the next few weeks and so hopefully will be spending a bit of time in the workshop 8) )

 

[Paul Chapman]

Those hooped chisels are designed to be hit with a hammer so it would have probably fractured in use anyway Maybe the cheapo ones with plastic handles aren't so bad after all......

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[Wiley Horne]

Steve,

That's terrible. Is that a Tasai chisel?

Wiley

 

[jaspr]

Sorry - I meant to put this here (still getting used to working on this forum)

I'm not familiar with that label. What was the brand, promhandicam?

I recently had to do this with a couple of japanese chisels and I had trouble getting the hoop down far enough on one of them. I ended up leaving it flush with the top of the handle to see how this would work. Yours seems to have gone a long way down. Almost too far?

jaspr

 

[David C]

This has happened before!
I used to seat the tapered part of the chisel shaft in a hole in a lump of hardwood, held in large engineers vice.

The hole needs to grip the solid part of the shaft (black) before the tapered conical tube (silver).

Your chisel can probably be rescued and becomes slightly shorter than a mini chisel.

Personally I have always preferred the mini chisels when one gets down to this sort of size. Aptc used to sell a temple carpenters size in 1.5 mm which seemed very fragile.

David Charlesworth

 

[ByronBlack]

Atleast you have saved some money in getting a swan-necked chisel!

Can you not send it back for a refund, surely it shouldn't break that easily - even with the hoop on, I would imagine a couple of good whacks and that would have broken seems to be faulty?

Out of curiosity, where did you buy it?

 

[promhandicam]

Sorry for the delayed replies but we have bad power cuts at the moment and my little generator at the house has packed up

Is that a Tasai chisel?

I'm not familiar with that label. What was the brand, promhandicam?

Wiley and Jaspr, the chisel is a Yuusuke Oire nomi with an Holme Oak Handle bought from Peter Veal aka Peterthegoodtoolguy on ebay.

I used to seat the tapered part of the chisel shaft in a hole in a lump of hardwood, held in large engineers vice. The hole needs to grip the solid part of the shaft (black) before the tapered cone (silver).
Your chisel can probably be rescued and becomes slightly shorter than a mini chisel.

David, you manage to explain more clearly what I was trying to say about clamping in a vice. And yes, I will regrind and end up with a mini chisel.

Can you not send it back for a refund, surely it shouldn't break that easily - even with the hoop on, I would imagine a couple of good whacks and that would have broken seems to be faulty?

Sending stuff back from here isn't that easy. As Derek Cohen has said in another post Peter is an honest chap and so I'll write to him and explain the problem and will see what he says. Will let you know.

Steve

 

[Gary]

Maybe the final tap with a 10lb hammer wasn't such a good idea. :lol: :lol: :lol:

I would try talking to the company who sold them. Maybe a 1.5mm chisel is not designed to be struck with a hammer. It is however worth asking the question of how should the hoop be located.

 

[promhandicam]

A final follow up on the hoop setting issue. I contacted Peter and he offered to reimburse the cost of the chisel to my paypal account as he didn't have any more of that size left. He also said to keep the broken one which I thought was very reasonable of him. As Gary suggests, he did say that the thinner chisels aren't designed to be hit with a steel hammer, and if they are sharp then they shouldn't need hitting at all. Which rather begs the question, Why are they fitted with hoops then?

In addition he gave the following advice on setting hoops:

Just a word about conditioning the hoops.
No material should be removed from the handle.
If you were starting from scratch with a new chisel you should mark the position on the handle about 1/8" below where you want your hoop to sit.
Remove the hoop.
With a very fine saw the head of the handle should be 'cross- hatched' with roughly 1/8" deep cuts to loosen the fibres.
With a good sturdy vice the handle should be compressed slightly, down to the mark you have made, rotating the handle in the vice to ensure even compression.
The hoop should them fit down to the mark or the compression line with ease.
Leave the chisel alone for a few hours to allow the fibres of the timber where you have compressed it, to expand once more.
The hoop will now be tight with the 'cross-hatched' part of the handle protruding beyond it.
This 'cross-hatched' area can then be tapped so that the cut fibres overlap the hoop head.

I wonder what others think of this technique?

Steve

 

[pam niedermayer]

I think Joel's site is more consistant with normal Japanese hoop setting advice: http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/...store&nextpage=/extra/setting_hoop_guide.html

Pam

 

[promhandicam]

I think Joel's site is more consistant with normal Japanese hoop setting advice. Pam

Hi Pam. If you look at the original post, this was exactly the advice that I followed - resulting in a broken chisel :roll:

Steve

 

[pam niedermayer]

Steve, when setting up hand made tools, sometimes a particular tool will break at a sort of fault line. It just happens and has nothing much to do with using the method on Joel's site or anything else except the forging was flawed for that tool.

Pam

 

[Modernist]

I recently bought a set of Japanese paring chisels from the above mentioned Peterthegoodtoolguy and I cannot recommend them too highly, especially at the price of £10.95 each. I think there may be some narrower chisels left but all the wider stuff has gone.

No hoops to hammer either!